A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to reinstate Maurene Comey, a daughter of former FBI director Jim Comey, who was fired from her role as a New York public corruption prosecutor last year.
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman, who held a hearing about the matter last month, concluded that Comey was “unlawfully terminated” from the Justice Department role after a MAGA blogger identified her relation to Jim Comey — long one of President Donald Trump’s political foes. The judge also ordered the DOJ to give her five months’ back pay.
In his opinion, Furman ruled that the removal “indisputably” violated the Civil Service Reform Act, which limits when and how millions of executive branch employees may be removed from office, including assistant U.S. attorneys.
Furman also ruled against the Trump administration’s more sweeping argument that Article II of the Constitution meant that Congress does not have the authority to regulate the removal of executive branch employees.
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That argument “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent” that still holds, the judge wrote, and the Trump administration argument would “unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.”
The government has “invented a new and expansive theory of executive power. And they have also utilized that theory to remove other Executive Branch employees who have long held protections from removal,” Furman wrote.
Maurene Comey worked on high-profile prosecutions — like those of rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — until she was abruptly fired on July 16, 2025. At the time, Trump was seeking to exact revenge on her father.
She sued the government later that summer, describing her termination as discrimination “based on her connection to her father, or her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.” In her lawsuit, she described how she was fired just hours after the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office had asked her to join a trial team on a major case.
The curt email from DOJ human resources said Comey had been removed “effective immediately” and subsequent paperwork merely cited Article II of the U.S. Constitution — which has become the second Trump administration’s go-to reasoning for justifying mass political firings of career employees.
Comey’s lawsuit described how she met with Jay Clayton — then the Trump-appointed interim head of the office and currently the national intelligence director — who told her: “All I can say is it came from Washington. I can’t tell you anything else.”
In court, the DOJ has since said the decision was made by Trump’s first attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has since been fired. MAGA social media influencer Laura Loomer, who put a target on Comey’s back in May 2025, appeared to take credit for the termination.
It’s unclear whether Comey will actually take her job back, however. She is now a partner on the white-collar defense team at the New York firm Patterson Belknap Webb and Tyler.
Furman dismissed several other claims in Comey’s complaint while declining to rule on one count alleging the DOJ violated her First Amendment rights. The judge said he was inclined to grant the government’s motion to dismiss that count, because it wasn’t clear whether Comey would return to a federal role where officials could remove or discipline her for “reasons that would run afoul of the First Amendment.”
A DOJ spokesperson said the department disagreed with the decision and plans to appeal.
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